rather
crossly.

"You'll feel differently about a good many things when you get to be my
age," said Janet tolerantly. "That's one of the things we learn as we
grow older--how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at
twenty."

Chapter XXXV

The Last Redmond Year Opens

"Here we are, all back again, nicely sunburned and rejoicing as a strong
man to run a race," said Phil, sitting down on a suitcase with a sigh of
pleasure. "Isn't it jolly to see this dear old Patty's Place again--and
Aunty--and the cats? Rusty has lost another piece of ear, hasn't he?"

"Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world if he had no ears at all,"
declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while Rusty writhed about her lap
in a frenzy of welcome.

"Aren't you glad to see us back, Aunty?" demanded Phil.

"Yes. But I wish you'd tidy things up," said Aunt Jamesina plaintively,
looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four
laughing, chattering girls were surrounded. "You can talk just as well
later on. Work first and then play used to be my motto when I was a
girl."

"Oh, we've just reversed that in this generation, Aunty. OUR motto is
play your play and then dig in. You can do your work so much better if
you've had a good bout of play first."

"If you are going to marry a minister," said Aunt Jamesina, picking up
Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the inevitable with the
charming grace that made her the queen of housemothers, "you will have
to give up such expressions as 'dig in.'"

"Why?" moaned Phil. "Oh, why must a minister's wife be supposed to utter
only prunes and prisms? I shan't. Everybody on Patterson Street uses
slang--that is to say, metaphorical language--and if I didn't they would
think me insufferably proud and stuck up."

"Have you broken the news to your family?" asked Priscilla, feeding the
Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.

Phil nodded.

"How did they take it?"

"Oh, mother rampaged. But I stood rockfirm--even I, Philippa Gordon, who
never before could hold fast to anything. Father was calmer. Father's
own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart for
the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and
they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every
conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. Oh, my vacation
pathway hasn't been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear. But--I've won
out and I've g